So Long, BOTW

January 14, 2017 – 5:07 pm

The Wall Street Journal editor James Taranto has for many years published a daily digest called Best of the Web. I’ve always enjoyed reading it: Mr. Taranto is a smart and funny guy, an astute observer, and a good writer.

Mr. Taranto has now been promoted to editor of the paper’s op-ed pages, and BOTW is no more. The final installment, which included a look back at the media’s coverage of the last election, is here. (I didn’t see it until just now, having been away.)

A snippet:

When you think about journalism in this way, its failure in 2016 becomes very simple to understand. Whether you see Trump as a hero or a goat—or something in between, which is our still-tentative view—his unlikely ascension to the presidency was a hell of a story. Most journalists missed the story because they were too caught up in defending a system of cultural authority of which they had foolishly allowed themselves to become an integral part.

I thank James Taranto for some of the most entertaining and lighthearted political coverage of the past decade or so, and wish him well in his new job.